If you watch many of the big-budget superhero movies, you’ll begin to notice how many stylistic and plot devices they have in common, especially when there are sequels and more sequels. With millions of dollars on the line, Hollywood isn’t about to take any chances! If you haven't seen that many of the movies, Cracked has a guide to the eight rules comic book movie series must follow. Link -via Digg

Don’t try to make friends with a cassowary! The Guinness Book of World Records named it the world’s most dangerous bird.

The Cassowary lives in the rain forests of Australia and New Guinea and are actually pretty shy animals if undisturbed, but if you get to close and it thinks you’re a threat you could receive a bone-breaking kick or get sliced by its dagger-like sharp claws. During WWII, soldiers stationed in New Guinea were warned to stay away from these birds, but some of them still became victims.

Zookeepers who take care of the endangered species are in danger themselves from the threat of job-related injuries. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend

The Museum of Unworkable Devices is one of those sites everyone on the internet should visit at least once.

This museum is a celebration of fascinating devices that don't work. It houses diverse examples of the perverse genius of inventors who refused to let their thinking be intimidated by the laws of nature, remaining optimistic in the face of repeated failures. Watch and be amazed as we bring to life eccentric and even intricate perpetual motion machines that have remained steadfastly unmoving since their inception. Marvel at the ingenuity of the human mind, as it reinvents the square wheel in all of its possible variations. Exercise your mind to puzzle out exactly why they don't work as the inventors intended.

There’s a special emphasis on the Holy Grail of engineering, the perpetual motion machine. Alex has posted about the museum before, but that was in 2005 when Neatorama was very young. Link -via the Presurfer

Lisa Harrell changed her postal route Monday because she had an Express Mail package to deliver. She was at the proper address at 11AM when a one-year-old baby girl fell out of a half-opened second story window!

"I noticed the upstairs window open halfway," she said. "The baby fell right into my arms. Everything happened so quick."

The baby was screaming as she fell, Harrell said, and afterward. But paramedics from the Albany Fire Department examined her and found no visible injuries.

No charges were filed against the baby’s mother, Brenda Morales, but child protective services was notified. Harrell denies that she is a hero, saying she was in the right place at the right time. Link -via Arbroath

(image credit: John Carl D'Annibale/Times Union)

(YouTube link)
Lex 10 created this joyful yet short video with the music of Cream.

I drive a 12 year old Pontiac convertible to my place of work, so I get quite the panoramic view. I was waiting for the light to change across from a storage complex, when I noticed how the end of Cream's "Glad" matched so beautifully with the tube man on top of the storage complex's roof as he waved his pneumatic arms and whipped his pneumatic head back in an unbridled expression of glee and air-filled pride.

Link -via Boing Boing

(YouTube link)
This neat little parlor trick using milk, food coloring, and dishwashing liquid will be perfect for my daughter’s birthday party. It’s probably a classic, but I’ve never seen it before. Don’t drink the results! -via Grow-A-Brain

(YouTube link)
In response to a recent story about the deaths of two bloggers, Barely Political did an undercover expose of the seamy underworld of the blogging business. Bloggers are subjected to horrific conditions and inhuman treatment, which must be immediately remedied. -via Bits and Pieces

Researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa compared the feet of people from different cultures plus 2,000 year old skeletons. The skeletons had the healthiest feet (at least when they were alive), followed by the modern population that normally goes barefoot.

“Natural gait is biomechanically impossible for any shoe-wearing person,” wrote Dr. William A. Rossi in a 1999 article in Podiatry Management. “It took 4 million years to develop our unique human foot and our consequent distinctive form of gait, a remarkable feat of bioengineering. Yet, in only a few thousand years, and with one carelessly designed instrument, our shoes, we have warped the pure anatomical form of human gait, obstructing its engineering efficiency, afflicting it with strains and stresses and denying it its natural grace of form and ease of movement head to foot.” In other words: Feet good. Shoes bad.

Walking barefoot may be best, but it’s difficult to do in the modern world. Designers are working on shoes that have less padding, fewer features, and simulate the act of walking barefoot. New York magazine looks at this and other ways we can learn to walk healthier. Link -via Geek Like Me

(image credit: Tom Schierlitz)

Cog Factory is a logic game that seems simple, but it’s NOT easy! You must sort the different colored cogs into receptacles, keeping the same colors together. Get three in a row and they disappear. Use the left and right keys to rotate the discharger and the space key to discharge. You can tell from the picture that I haven't gotten the hang of it yet. Link -via Ursi’s Blog

A proposed hydroelectric dam on the Congo River in the Democratic Republic of Congo could double the electricity available in all of Africa and bring power to hundreds of millions of people. Representatives from seven African countries are meeting with construction firms and bankers to plan construction on Grand Inga, as the dam is named.

Grand Inga was proposed in the 1980s but never got beyond feasibility studies because of political turmoil in central Africa. But now it stands a chance, according to Gerald Doucet, secretary general of the World Energy Council thinktank, which is convening the London meeting.

"It is the greatest sustainable development project, offering Africa a unique chance for interdependence and prosperity," said Doucet. "It's much more feasible now than ever. There is a peace settlement in Congo, and economic and technical studies have all shown it is possible."

Some advocacy groups fear that even if an incredible amount of power is generated, it won’t benefit most citizens of Africa. Terry Hathaway of the organization International Rivers fears corruption in such a large project.

Hathaway said that the 94% of people in Congo DRC and the two in three Africans who have no electricity now were unlikely to benefit because the dam depends on exporting its electricity to existing centres of industry, especially in South Africa where there have been power shortages.

"As it stands, the project's electricity won't reach even a fraction of the continent's 500 million people not yet connected to the grid. Building a distribution network that would actually light up Africa would increase the project's cost exponentially. It would be very different if rural energy received the kind of commitment and attention now being lavished on Inga," she said.

The proposed cost of the Grand Inga is estimated at $80 billion. Link -via Digg

CNN is now selling t-shirts with their headlines on them. As of right now, it’s pretty simple to make up your own headline. They’ll probably get that fixed pretty soon. Link to CNN store. Link to this shirt. Link to another great one. -via YesButNoButYes

In today’s lunchtime quiz from mental_floss, you are to decide which website of a pair is more popular, according to Alexa rankings. I scored 80%, only missing the subjects that are outside my areas of interest, but it’s supposed to be my business to know such things. No, Neatorama is not in any of the questions. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/14289

This Lego recreation of Mount Rushmore is not full size. Of course not! But its pretty big. This is just one of the the wonderful Lego sculptures featured in the list 33 Of The Most Intricate & Realistic Lego Creations, which has links to each. Don’t miss the fully-functional Lego pinball machine and the 20-foot tall giraffe! Link -Thanks, Andy Boyd!

The Big Fat Quiz Design Arts Includes: - fashion design - photography, painting, objective arts - media design - drawing and illustration - interior design and decorating - culinary arts You are an imaginative, inventive artist. Your negative traits may be that you are needy, emotional, confused, and/ or easily stressed. The design arts are perfect for you because you get to express your creative self and have fun doing it.

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

Answer 16 simple questions and see where your interests really lie. This is my result. Whether you have the talent for the job or not is a totally different question! Link -via Geek Like Me

(YouTube link)
In this silent film from 1899, two ladies (male actors play the parts) are engaged in some sort of excited exchange when two men play a trick on them. From the YouTube page:

The film doesn't make clear why they deserve this attack, but an accompanying set of cards produced by the production company indicates that the ladies were engaged in a discussion about the then pressing political issue of women's suffrage.

From the British Film Institute National Archive. Link